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Voters remember Trump’s economy as being better than Biden’s. Here’s what the data shows.
As voters head to the polls on Super Tuesday, many will be voting with one issue top of mind: the state of the U.S. economy.
A recent CBS News poll found that 65% of Americans remember the economy under former President Donald Trump as being good, compared with 38% giving the current economy under President Joe Biden the same positive assessment.
In fact, almost 6 in 10 voters polled by CBS News described the U.S. economy under Biden as bad, even as economists’ views are much more upbeat due to the nation’s stronger-than-expected GDP and low unemployment. Instead of entering a recession, as many economists had predicted last year, the economy appears to be on track to generate continued growth and more jobs while inflation recedes.
The key to the disconnect could reside in how voters experienced the economy between 2017 to 2019, during the first three years of Trump’s presidency, prior to the pandemic’s upheaval in 2020, compared with the post-pandemic years.
“These are two very different periods from an economic standpoint,” noted Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY. “The 2017-2019 period was the end of the longest business cycle on record — the economy was doing well, the labor market was quite strong. We had the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years, we had an economy growing at a sub-2% rate but still moving forward.”
Overall, he added, “There was essentially a pretty steady state of the economy before the pandemic.”
In other words, the economy prior to the pandemic was chugging along, providing a strong if not stellar environment. But the post-pandemic economy introduced a number of upheavals, including a labor shortage and the highest inflation in 40 years — which has since receded but remains above its pre-pandemic levels.
“There is that sentiment that you are still coming out of a shock,” he added.
To be sure, presidents often get credit when the economy is performing well and are blamed when it tanks, even though there’s a limit to how much influence the commander in chief has over such a complex system. Indeed, the economy’s performance is often tied to boom-and-bust cycles that don’t have much to do with who’s occupying the White House.
Here’s what the data shows about the 2017-2019 economy under Trump versus the 2021-2023 economy under Biden.
Inflation
The major difference between the two periods boils down to inflation, or the upward change in prices for goods and services.
From 2017 to 2019, inflation hovered at about 2% per year – a low enough level where people generally don’t notice changes from day to day. But when COVID-19 shut global supply chains and caused a labor shortage, prices shot up, with inflation hitting a 40-year high of 9.1% in June 2022.
Suddenly, shoppers were reminded of inflation each time they went to the grocery store – an issue that remains a pain point for consumers. Even though inflation has receded, prices aren’t going back to their pre-pandemic levels, and that continues to eat into consumers’ budgets.
“We’re coming out of an environment where inflation has become a key topic, a key issue, a key point of conversation, whereas it wasn’t for most of the three decades that preceded the pandemic,” Daco noted. “It’s gone from a non-issue to an essential issue, and that for me is the key reason people are feeling more downbeat than economic conditions would dictate.”
Consumers value predictability when it comes to prices, something that Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell highlighted when he spoke with CBS News last month.
“I can’t overstate how important it is to restore price stability, by which I mean inflation is low and predictable and people don’t have to think about it in their daily lives,” Powell said. “That’s where we were for 20 years. We want to get back to that.”
Wages
Wages rose at about 3% annually prior to the pandemic, representing solid gains, yet far from the strides of the late 1990s, when workers enjoyed pay bumps of about 5% annually.
But more importantly, wage growth from 2017 to 2019 inched ahead of inflation, providing American workers with more purchasing power.
That flipped in the wake of the pandemic, when wage growth failed to keep up with inflation. Suddenly, workers were losing purchasing power, an issue they encountered on every grocery trip, when they faced sky-high egg prices and more costly basics. With wages trailing inflation, many felt they were losing ground.
The good news for workers: Wages started trending ahead of inflation about a year ago.
GDP
One strength of the post-pandemic period has been better-than-expected gross domestic product, or the economy’s total output of goods and services.
While voters may not notice GDP on a personal level, a growing economy enables companies to expand and hire more workers. Businesses can also afford to pay higher wages when they have more demand for their goods or services.
Importantly, the economy so far has dodged a recession, which many economists had predicted would occur as a result of the Federal Reserve’s flurry of interest rate hikes, which typically cause businesses to pull back on spending, given the higher cost of borrowing.
“Like the Energizer Bunny, the U.S. economy just won’t quit,” Oxford Economics said in a January report on GDP.
Grading the Trump versus Biden economies
Many economists today say the U.S. is showing surprising economic resilience, dodging a recession and continuing to add jobs.
But, Daco noted, the economy is still recovering from the shock of the pandemic. And Americans are also facing other changes, such as higher interest rates — a result of the Federal Reserve’s battle against inflation — which means it’s more expensive now to buy a home, car or make any purchase with debt versus during Trump’s presidency.
The economy under Trump “was an A economy,” Daco said. “It was growing at a steady state.”
The economy now? “It’s a B on track to an A,” he added. “It’s progressing, but we’re not quite there yet.”
The following is a transcript of an interview with Sen. Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that aired on Oct. 6, 2024.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Joining us now is Arizona’s Democratic Senator, Mark Kelly. He’s in Detroit this morning on the campaign trail for the Harris campaign. Good morning to you, Senator.
SEN. MARK KELLY: Good morning, Margaret.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to talk to you about Arizona, but let’s start in Michigan, which is where you are right now. And it is going to be such a key state to a potential Harris or Trump victory. Vice President Harris is facing challenges among black men, working class people, as well as the Muslim and Arab populations skeptical of the White House support for Israel’s wars. What are you hearing on the ground there from voters?
SEN. KELLY: Well, my wife, Gabby Giffords, and I have been out here for a couple days. We’ve been campaigning across the country, Michigan, I’ve been in North Carolina, Georgia as well. I’ll be back to Arizona here soon. The vice president was out here speaking to Muslim organizations and the Arab community about what is at stake in this election and addressing the concerns that they have. What we’re hearing, issues about the economy, about gun violence, about, you know, supporting American families and the difference between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. You know, Kamala Harris, who has a vision for the future of this country, Donald Trump, who just wants to drag us backwards.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Today in Dearborn, Michigan, there’s a funeral service for an American man who was killed in Lebanon by an Israeli airstrike. It just underscores how that community you’re talking about out in Michigan feel some of what’s happening in a personal way to their community. Given how close this race is, do you think this war and the expectation it could escalate could cost Democrats both a seat in the Senate and potentially the presidency?
SEN. KELLY: Margaret, nobody wants to see escalation and it’s tragic when any innocent person, whether it’s an American or Palestinian, lose their life in a conflict. Tomorrow’s one year since October 7th, when Israel was violently attacked. Israel has a right to defend itself, not only from Hamas, but from Hezbollah and from the Iranians. But, you know, I and my wife, you know, we feel for the community here who’s been affected by this. And that’s why the vice president was out here earlier, a few days ago, meeting with that community.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But it’s a live issue.
SEN. KELLY: Yeah, sure. I mean, there is an ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Israel is, you know, fighting a war now on, I think it’s fair to say, two fronts and then being attacked by the Iranians as well. And, they- they need to defend themselves, and we need to support our Israeli ally. At the same time, when women and children lose their life, innocent people in a conflict, it is- it is tragic.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You do sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee and so I know you know how intense the efforts are by foreign actors to try to manipulate voters going into November. Just this Friday, Matthew Olsen, the lead on election threats at the Department of Justice, told CBS the Russians are, quote, highlighting immigration as a wedge issue. That is such a key issue in Arizona. Are you seeing targeted information operations really focusing in on Arizonans right now?
SEN. KELLY: Not only in Arizona, in other battleground states. It’s the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, and it’s significant. And we need to do a better job getting the message out to the American people that there is a huge amount of misinformation. If you’re looking at stuff on Twitter, on TikTok, on Facebook, on Instagram, and it’s political in nature, and you may- might think that that person responding to that political article or who made that meme up is an American. It could be- it could look like a U.S. service member. There is a very reasonable chance I would put it in the 20 to 30% range, that the content you are seeing, the comments you are seeing, are coming from one of those three countries: Russia, Iran, China. We had a hearing recently, with the FBI director, the DNI, and the head of the National Security Agency. And we talked about this. And we talked about getting the word out. And it’s up to us, so thank you for asking me the question, because it’s up to us, the people who serve in Congress and the White House to get the information out there, that there is a tremendous amount of misinformation in this election, and it’s not going to stop on November 5th.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Understood. And we will do our best to help parse that for viewers. But on the topic of the border, President Biden did announce just this past week new regulations to keep in place that partial asylum ban that he rolled out back in June. That’s what’s credited with helping to bring down some of the border crossing numbers in recent weeks. It was supposed to be a temporary policy, dependent on how many people were crossing at a time. Do you think this is the right long term policy, or is this just a gimmick to bring down numbers ahead of the election?
SEN. KELLY: Well, the right long term policy is to do this through legislation. And we were a day or two away from doing that, passing strong border security legislation supported by the vice president, negotiated by the vice president, and the president and his Department of Homeland Security, with Democrats and Republicans–
MARGARET BRENNAN: But this is not legislation.
SEN. KELLY: –This is bipartisan. This isn’t. But the legislation was killed by Donald Trump. We were really close to getting it passed. That’s the correct way to do this. When you can’t do that, Margaret, when a former president interrupts the legislative process the way he did, which is the most hypocritical thing I’ve ever seen in my three and a half years in the Senate. After that happened, the only other option is executive actions. And this has gone from what was chaos and a crisis at our southern border to somewhat manageable. And if you’re the border- Border Patrol, you know, this is this- you need this. I mean, otherwise it is unsafe for Border Patrol agents, for CBP officers, for migrants, for communities in southern Arizona. So it’s unfortunate that this was the- these were the steps that had to be taken.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay.
SEN. KELLY: But that’s because the former president didn’t allow us to do this through legislation.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Senator, we have to leave it right there. Face the Nation will be right back.
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Sen. Mark Kelly says Americans need to know about “huge amount of misinformation” on election
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